Use trumps tactic and dont pay it
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Economics
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It’s pretty funny to sell something and then pay more than what the sale was worth to import it. I can see a lot of US businesses getting hurt this way from the volatile auction-based tariff prices (out my ass) by losing customers or having to eat the loss.
Adafruit makes some seriously useful PCBs.
If you have ever tinkered, you likely have some sort of requirement that needs a little more tech to make work. Afafruit cover that gap, and all their stuff is open source.
A genuinely good US tech company.
Not only that, but they make a LOT of libraries that make using those sensors WAY easier. Arduino, CircuitPython, and more. And lots of well-written tutorials! They care, and it shows. They don't deserve these tariffs...
Isn't Adafruit British in origin?
OH! I'm thinking of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is in Britain.
I guess I confused them in my head since I got in to both around the same time so many years ago and seldom think about origins of corps...
Great job. Tariffs killing American companies.
Correction — small American businesses. The large ones can easily pass on the cost to consumers.
Working as intended....
I know you're just being snarky, but if a company's main purpose is importing parts from China then they suffer as a result of tariffs on China, than it is in fact working as intended.
Millions of Americans in the entire swaths of the country had to watch their homes die as businesses were outsourced. What's left is crime, drugs, and suicide. Like a lot of things, the people on the ground were just told to suck it up and deal with the new normal.
Besides, with China increasingly saber rattling, what happens if they try to take Taiwan, or end up in full scale conflict with India? COVID was a taste of a future that could be upcoming.
It is true that tariffs are paid for by American companies and by American consumers, but it is also true that if it is American companies and American consumers who end up buying the stuff from China and justifying the movement of industries from developed countries to countries like China. People don't talk a whole lot about it, but there were a number of policy changes that were made around the 1970s which were instrumental in hollowing out the rust belt over the past 50 years.
Countries particularly like China can impose their own tariffs, but the reality is that prior to the economic changes in the world wars that made globalization and free trade a good idea, America was its own biggest market. Henry Ford famously increased the pay of his workers and one of the benefits of that was that they could afford the cars that they were building.
Another thing is that tariffs alone don't rebuild industry, but unlike the previous changes they don't hurt. If they're going to stick around in the long term which unfortunately remains to be seen since American democracy happens in four your increments, then companies that were going to invest in China suddenly have a large incentive to invest in America for American markets.
It is true that reducing us trade can affect soft power, but I think that there's a counterpoint that letting things continue as they are will also reduce soft power because racking up debt to buy Chinese goods isn't sustainable in the long term or even the medium term. Moreover, if the United States can't manufacture anything to defend itself, and that conflict with China happens, it look a lot like Europe and it's struggle against Russia.
It could also be the case that this isn't being rolled out in a very nuanced and structured way, and I think that there is legitimacy to that, but as I mentioned before United States politics happens in 4-year increments, and so you have to go hard early.
Oh, sorry, it's Lemmy. "Look at how stupid and bad Cheetos Hitler is!"
Here's the rub, and you said it: The tariffs may not last and our politics come in 4-year intervals. Who in their right mind is going to build factories here given the outrageous risk?
Also, not sure what you're on about with America not being able to defend itself? Chinese rare earth export bans?
It was meant to conglomerate them. One less Amazon competitor to them.
We don’t like intellectuals nor investing in the future around these parts.
Money now only.
Also, somebody ate my marshmallow I can’t find it.
Needless to say, most companies aren't Apple. They don't have cash reserves, can't reroute shipping, can't lawyer/bribe up, can't afford to lose money for even a month. We're going to see the first bankruptcies and/or layoffs soon. Shit.
I was just about to buy most the stuff I need for a cyber deck from them
Do it, they need every drop business they can get.
I’m ordering a round display and driver I was planning on testing out later. Was gonna wait but now I want to do it now to hopefully help them survive this.
I often hear good things about AdaFruit, so it made my terrible experience with them all the more disappointing and unexpected.
I won't launch into the full story, but I had placed what was to me an expensive order. One item of the cheapest things I bought was missing a part. Their customer service folks were so dismissive and unpleasant, they made me try to resolve the issue with their supplier (iirc piminori or something along those lines), they insisted that there was no way this could happen because it would never have passed their quality control team, that it wasn't their responsibility to make it right, etc. It was such a bad experience that I've never returned.
So honestly, I have no sympathy here. From my perspective, this sort of thing could not have happened to a more deserving company.